Ancient Cult Files #1 -- Phase IV

   Saul Bass, a widely recognized figure in the film-making sphere, is best known for his unique talent in the creation of film posters and film credit sequences. He also is the graphic designer responsible for some of the most easily recognizable corporate logos such as Geffen Records, Quaker Oats, Girl Scouts of USA, and AT&T and worked alongside other titans of cinema such as Alfred Hitchcock.
   He only ever directed one film, and he teamed up with over 1000 extras to complete it.
   Phase IV was released in 1974, it starred Michael Murphy, Nigel Davenport, and Lynne Fredrick, along with all the ants which are the true main characters of the film. 
   The story begins with unknown big-bang scale event in space, which triggers a change in one of the living species on earth, but they were so small the no one noticed. This galactic phenomenon causes the ants in a region of the Arizona desert to alter their behavioral structure all together. Their progress is listed in "Phases"; they first begin to meet as though they are representatives in the United Nations, ignoring their usual ecological niches of trying to kill each other to survive. But instead the various species of ants begin to use each other's skills

Ant skyscrapers

to make a more prominent and cohesive race of insects. Only one queen ant is ever shown, and it is unclear if she is the queen of all the ants or rather just one queen of one of the colonies in the new ant-world order. Under their new societal system, they build more elaborate and efficient homes (skyscrapers made of dirt) and begin to slowly take over the surrounding ecosystem. By the time the human characters show up, they have entered "Phase III". Michael Murphy plays James Lasko, who is a specialist on communicating with animals through sound and geometric means (who only had success with emotionally disturbed killer whales, perhaps at Sea World) and is summoned by Dr. Ernest Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) who has been sent to study the ever-expanding ant super-society. 

The scientist's dome

   The ants have mostly run out any residents in the area, so the scientists are working alone in their dome-shaped laboratory equipped with all the essentials for their stay and high powered computer (state of the art 1970's computer).

   Dr. Hubbs decides to provoke the ants to see their reaction, which angers them and they attack the farm of the only family left in the area, including young Kendra (Lynne Fredrick) and the family attempt to flee to the scientists lab. The scientists investigate the next morning and discover Kendra's family dead along with the ants after battling with the swarm all night, but the girl unharmed after taking shelter in a nearby abandoned home. They take her into the dome for protection, since they know the ants are regrouping and will be back.

 The rest of the film details the battle of wits which ensues; Dr. Hubbs becomes hell-bent on proving his superiority over the insects, Lasko trying to communicate with them, and a traumatized Kendra trying to

Dr. Hubbs, Kendra, and Lasko

deal with her grief and anger over her family's death. However, the ants always seem to be one step ahead of the humans in some capacity: they become immune to whatever pesticide they use against them, slowly but surely cripple their equipment, and test their powers of deduction with various messages that they send to Lasko. 

   The film is beautifully shot and has amazing close-up footage of the ants. The special photography of the insects was done by Ken Middleham who worked on several documentaries featuring such intimate camera work. The queen ant shown in the film is actually a female wasp; they could not use a real queen ant because getting one would be extremely difficult and the colony would perish in her absence. The acting is not the strongest, but all the actors do their jobs. The ants are arguably the characters we are meant to sympathize with. You see them come to a higher level

Rows of the fallen in battle

of consciousness in the opening, then watch them go through struggles that humans experience in warfare. The shot that best captures this eerie empathy is a scene in which the ants are laying out their dead as a result of the fighting with the human characters, much like what we see in real-world fighting in the media everyday. This parallelism with war is also seen in the characters themselves; Hubbs being the constantly defensive one, Lasko being the diplomat trying to forge any kind of non-violent relations, and Kendra representing the innocent who has been sucked into the torrent of conflict. None of their forms of coping with the situation can be successful because they continue to quarrel among themselves. The ants perhaps represent all that the human race could have been, and the human characters represent what it is, and now the ants have come to replace us. They operate as humans did upon our sudden jump in intelligence,

One of the film's many extras

slowly conquering each bit of the ecosystem until we could dominate almost every aspect of it.

   Another element of the film that adds to its aura is the soundtrack. It's a fine electronic atmospheric themed score done by David Vorhaus and Desmond Briscoe. In the sequences when it is only the ants, it turns into a style similar to that of the silent age, allowing the music to speak for the insects, only accompanied by the pitter-patter of their six little legs and occasional calls between ants. The ending of the film is like a lot of the plot, open-ended; it leaves the fate of humanity ambiguous, revealing only the end of the conflict between the characters in the film. The end also reveals the title, for this marks the end of "Phase III" and the initiation of "Phase IV" as the credits role.

   The film was a box-office failure and this partially lead to Saul Bass never directing again. However, the film has developed a cult-following thanks to a VHS release by Paramount and some television screenings, one being one of the early episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Modern director Nicolas Goldbart has cited Phase IV as having a great influence on his own film making, and other film makers and also musicians have made homages to the film through their work.It has been criticized for putting the

Title card

cinematography and visual effects before the acting and script, and also for its unexplained plot threads throughout.

   I personally like the vagueness because it ignites the imagination to fill in the holes for yourself; was it an act of God, aliens seeking to destroy the earth, or simply evolution taking place that made the ants so intelligent? The film both provokes thought and entertains the immediate mind, making it a trip into a realm of unknowns; if we replaced the dominate species before us, then how long will our reign last?

   Phase IV is wonderful if you're in the mood for a stylistic science fiction head-spinner. It's also fun to watch with friends if you want to crack up about the, at times, lack-luster acting or the stupidity of the humans in comparison to the ants. 

   A solid four stars. Check it out.

"Go away, please go away." - Kendra